Why don't North Koreans revolt? (Part 1)
Whenever I speak alongside North Korean refugees, one question often comes up. Why hasn't there been a revolution in North Korea? The reality is that North Koreans have resisted.
What follows are some of the reported uprisings and alleged coup attempts, the smaller acts that rarely get counted, and the machinery the government built to keep any of it from spreading.
In May 1987 at Camp 12 in Changpyong, Onsong County, a prisoner in a coal mine allegedly killed a guard who had been beating another prisoner, and hundreds joined him before guards arrived with machine guns, and the revolt was crushed, according to the Chosun Ilbo.
In 1992, North Korean officers who had studied at the Soviet Union's Frunze Military Academy, having watched perestroika and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, allegedly plotted to remove Kim Jong-il on the 60th anniversary of the Korean People's Army on April 25. About 70 senior commanders were arrested and purged.
Jasper Becker, citing the head of South Korean intelligence, said about 30 officers attempted a mutiny at Seventh Corps headquarters in Hamheung in March 1993, timed to an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection in the hope of drawing outside attention. They were arrested before acting.
Daily NK reported that in 1995 or 1996, political officers and commanders in the Sixth Corps planned an uprising in North Hamgyeong Province, before it was detected by the Defense Security Command. Around 40 officers were executed, some 300 severely punished, and the corps was renumbered as the Ninth Corps.
This is North Korea, so we should keep in mind that some of these alleged incidents could be propaganda spread by the regime as a warning to others that they could be killed for resisting.
In August 1993, the Guardian reported that an army lieutenant named Im Young-sun told a Seoul press conference that hungry people had rioted. In Haeju in February 2008, nine women barred from the market by an age rule reportedly set up their stalls anyway, fought the managers and were arrested, and the city later tolerated their trading. In Chongjin the following month, women traders protested the removal of their stalls and threatened to stop reporting to their state workplaces.
A large protest followed the currency measure of Nov. 30, 2009, which capped the amount any household could convert, wiping out savings. Protests resulted in a rare government apology and Pak Nam-gi, the Workers' Party finance chief, was publicly executed in March 2010. After that, North Koreans began using Chinese yuan and U.S. dollars.
Andrew David Jackson, writing in the European Journal of Korean Studies in 2018, cataloged market uprisings in Chongsong and Sinuiju in February 2011, in Chongju, Ryongchon and Sonchon on Feb. 14, 2011, and in Hamheung, Chongjin and Musan in 2015.
Former prisoners describe hunger strikes, refusal to follow prison rules, and fights with guards. Defectors describe assaults on local officials during disputes over food, markets and confiscated goods, along with deliberate damage to state property, production quotas missed on purpose, mobilization orders ignored and ideological meetings skipped with bribes.
In 2016, leaflets reading “Let us overthrow Kim Jong Un” allegedly appeared in a marketplace alley in Pochon County in Nov. White graffiti reading “Punish Kim Jong Un, the enemy of the people” was allegedly found on a wall at Sunnam Market in Chongjin in early December. In December, Daily NK reported 5,000-won bills scattered in the Nammun-dong district of Hoeryong with “Overthrow Kim Jong Un” written in ballpoint pen across the portrait of Kim Il-sung.
In December 2023, someone in Posong-ri village in Ryanggang Province allegedly added a word in charcoal to a collective farm sign reading "Whatever the party orders, we will do." Radio Free Asia translated the edit as, "Whatever the party orders, we are screwed."
North Koreans have fought back, but they cannot form opposition parties, independent unions, civic groups or a free press. They cannot organize public demonstrations or establish independent organizations outside state control. Travel between provinces requires official permission, which makes it hard for people to organize. International phone calls are illegal and the global internet is unavailable to ordinary citizens.
Surveillance reaches into daily life through neighborhood watch units that report on residents, self-criticism sessions that require people to confess in public and criticize one another, and informant networks that make any private conversation a risk. The Ministry of State Security investigates political crimes, and the Ministry of Social Security enforces public order. People accused of anti-state activity can be imprisoned, publicly executed, or sent to a political prison camp, and their families can be punished, too.
Why don't North Koreans fight back is often asked? North Korea is so good at preventing its citizens from interacting with the outside world that few people are aware of cases of North Koreans resisting.
Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is the co-founder of Freedom Speakers International with Lee Eun-koo and the co-author with Han Song-mi of her memoir “Greenlight to Freedom: A North Korean Daughter's Search for Her Mother and Herself.”